Libby Anson is a writer, artist, creative and professional development coach and lecturer.
She studied Fine Art at the university of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (1980-84), before going on to undertake postgraduate Art Gallery & Museum Studies at Manchester University. She has since worked in the public and private gallery sectors, curating exhibitions and working as a gallery educationalist. From 1990 she has been a freelance art critic and a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) since 1993; her writing has been published in a variety of national and international publications.
Libby co-authored the A-Z of Art and has written and contributed to a number of exhibition catalogues. She has edited art historical books, practical drawing guides and art education publications.
She has also been a fine art lecturer and creative professional development coach for over twenty years. She currently works at the Glasgow School of Art as Student Employability & Enterprise Manager, while maintaining her own writing and fine art practice.
Libby's practical work focuses on painting and drawing, having also specialised during her studies in art history and in printmaking - particularly fine etching. She continues her artistic practice which also includes performing and writing for theatre.
Her work as a critic followed on from her management at the end of the '80s of the commercial Creaser Gallery, Portobello, London, concentrating on contemporary abstract painting. Her written work has been published in Art Monthly, Contemporary Art Magazine, UNTITLED, Taïde (Hungary) and Material (Sweden) among other magazines, producing mainly exhibition reviews and artists' interviews.
Libby has been a lecturer in painting, life drawing, art criticism and professional development for various UK universities and has also worked as a life model. Her interest in the creative and professional development of artists, designers and writers has informed both her coaching, which she has delivered for various national arts and literary organizations as well as individual creatives, and also her current work with student employability and entrepreneurship.
Stephen Farthing studied at St Martin's School of Art, London (1969-73) before taking his Masters Degree in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London (1973-76). Here he was awarded an Abbey Major Scholarship, taking him to The British School at Rome for a year from 1976. His teaching career began as a Lecturer in Painting at Canterbury College of Art (1977-79), after which he was a Tutor in painting at the Royal College of Art, London from 1980 to 1985.
Stephen Farthing has exhibited extensively in one man shows since his first solo exhibition held at the Royal College of Art Gallery, London in 1977. His work, representing Britain, was shown at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1989, leading to many further solo shows in the UK and abroad, including South America and Japan. He has also participated in many group exhibitions since 1975, including the John Moores Liverpool Exhibitions, in which he was a Prize Winner in 1976, 1980, 1982, 1987, 1991, 1993, 1997 and 1999. He was represented by The Edward Totah Gallery in London and New York until Edwards death in 1997.
Farthing was Artist in Residence at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1989. He was elected Royal Academician in 1998 and in 2000 was made an Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. In 2000, Duckworth published, The Intelligent Persons Guide to Modern Art. He was executive director of the New York Academy of Art from September 2000 until August 2004 when he was appointed Rootstein Hopkins Research Chair of Drawing at the university of Arts London, which he has held until 2017. Stephen now lives and works in New York and London.
Francesca Ramsay is a freelance art historian and writer.
After completing an undergraduate degree in History of Art and Classics at the University of Glasgow, Francesca trained at the Warburg Institute in London, where she achieved a Distinction. This multidisciplinary education in Renaissance art and culture provided her with excellent academic research and writing skills (as well as some pretty niche knowledge). Here, she specialised in works on paper, notably in drawings of the nude. This was followed by a stint at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, where she worked as a researcher and cataloguer in the Prints and Drawings Department, and later as an antique print and map specialist at Sanders of Oxford.
Since graduating, Francesca has always worked at the interface between art and the public, leaving her adept at transforming complex ideas and academic jargon into something both accessible and entertaining. A varied career has left her with experience in both the commercial and public sectors. She is a trained art valuer, cutting her teeth at Dawson’s Auctions in Maidenhead and London, and has also worked as Press Manager at Frieze London. Francesca has designed and led tours in world renowned institutions including the National Trust, The Royal Albert Hall and The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. She also teaches art history, leading cultural groups around Italy with Art History Abroad.
Francesca lives and works in Bristol. She is currently working on a monograph on the queer British painter Wilfred Avery, as well as her first book, an artistic exploration into what it means to feel real, and why so many of us don’t.
In summary, this course is brilliantly designed to reach a wide range of audiences in terms of background and run by an enthusiastic team, from Lilly in support to my brilliant tutor Stephen Farthing, who also wrote a must-have book, "Art: the whole story" (on Amazon).
